My Lords, I did not intend to come in at this stage—there are further amendments later that I am interested in making a contribution to—but I agree with an awful lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, has said. Over the last year or two, I have been complaining that the real difficulty in this negotiation, if that is the right word to use for it—and I do not think that it is, by the way—lies in the way the protocol was born. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the protocol, or of the Bill—and I think there is an awful lot wrong with it—I am not at all convinced it is doing what it set out to do: in fact, it has failed to do that, because the DUP has not moved considerably because of the nature of the Bill. One reason is that the negotiations have been almost exclusively between the European Union on one hand and the British Government on the other, as the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, said. That is a fundamental problem.
I understand why the Irish Government feel that way. They are part of the European Union; the European Union negotiates on their behalf. I thought it would be a good idea if that were reversed: the Irish Government could have negotiated on behalf of the European Union because, as we have heard a number of times this evening, the issues we are dealing with reflect two international agreements. The first and overriding one is the Good Friday agreement. That is an international agreement lodged at the United Nations and it overrides everything, so far as we can see, with regard to the future of Northern Ireland. How on earth can officials from the European Union understand the issues facing Northern Ireland in the way that the Irish Government could?
That reflects too, of course, on how you involve the Northern Ireland parties. If anybody thinks that this whole issue is going to be resolved in Brussels, that is for the birds. The issue is to be resolved in Belfast: that is where the impasse is. The impasse is: why have we not got the institutions of the Good Friday agreement up and running? It is simple. It is because people have not talked to each other. There have not been proper negotiations.
I spent five years of my life negotiating in Northern Ireland so I know how intense those negotiations have to be. There were negotiations involving the European Union at some stage, but nothing like the negotiations between, on the one hand, the two Governments—the British Government and the Irish Government—and, critically, the Northern Ireland political parties on the other. In the end, they will have to decide this.
One of the great tragedies of all this—it was not the fault of the DUP; it was the fault of Sinn Féin, in this case—is that the Assembly and the Executive were brought down over the then Irish language Bill. The result was that there was no proper Executive comprised of the parties in Northern Ireland, who could have discussed all the issues we have been discussing for the past three weeks. Had there been a proper Executive and Assembly up and running, we would not—I hope—be here in the way we are. I have a lot of sympathy for what the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, said.
I still hope that, over the next few months, the Irish Government can discuss meaningfully with the British Government. I particularly hope that there are proper, meaningful negotiations involving the political parties in Northern Ireland. By that, I mean negotiations; I do not mean going to Belfast for a couple of hours, meeting the political leaders, and then coming back again. That is not going to work. You have to get people around a table. You have to involve all the political parties in Northern Ireland. You have to do the things that we have done over the past 10 or 20 years to achieve a real, lasting solution to this issue. What we are doing now is a sham. It will not solve anything at all. The only way we can do it is through negotiations that involve the Governments and the political parties in Northern Ireland.